Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Texts
- Introduction: Women, Entertainment, and Precursors of the French Salon , 1532–1615
- 1 At Play in Italy and France: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Social Continuities
- 2 Marie-Catherine de Pierrevive and the Dames des Roches: Proto-Salon Entertainment in Lyon and Poitiers
- 3 Antoinette de Loynes and Madeleine de l’Aubespine: Entertainment among the Parisian Noblesse de robe
- 4 Claude-Catherine de Clermont: Amusement and Escapism among the Noblesse d’épée and Royal Milieu
- 5 Marguerite de Valois and Proto-Précieuse Taste
- 6 L’Histoire de La Chiaramonte: A Divertissement for the Circle of Marguerite de Valois
- Conclusion : Sixteenth-Century Société Mondaine and the Persistence of Entertainment Practices
- Appendix: Estienne Pasquier and His Social Network
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - At Play in Italy and France: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Social Continuities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Texts
- Introduction: Women, Entertainment, and Precursors of the French Salon , 1532–1615
- 1 At Play in Italy and France: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Social Continuities
- 2 Marie-Catherine de Pierrevive and the Dames des Roches: Proto-Salon Entertainment in Lyon and Poitiers
- 3 Antoinette de Loynes and Madeleine de l’Aubespine: Entertainment among the Parisian Noblesse de robe
- 4 Claude-Catherine de Clermont: Amusement and Escapism among the Noblesse d’épée and Royal Milieu
- 5 Marguerite de Valois and Proto-Précieuse Taste
- 6 L’Histoire de La Chiaramonte: A Divertissement for the Circle of Marguerite de Valois
- Conclusion : Sixteenth-Century Société Mondaine and the Persistence of Entertainment Practices
- Appendix: Estienne Pasquier and His Social Network
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract: Italian ludic literary society influenced characteristics of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century société mondaine in France. Giambattista Marino, invited to France by Marie de’ Medici, served as a go-between for Italian and French seventeenth-century salon society. The queen's marriage and patronage practices reflect sixteenth-century transnational exchanges of powerful women through marriage, as well as their patronage of poets and scholars. Such women's tastes in literary, intellectual, and dramatic entertainments, as well as modes of ludic social interaction, proved sufficiently popular to endure into the seventeenth century, illustrating Bernard Suits's notion that games people play are harbingers of things to come and Roger Caillois's observation that the principles of games are often accepted and reflected in the larger culture.
Keywords: société mondaine, games, Italian women, French women, ludic culture, Giambattista Marino
You, (they say) raise O MARIN with your merry sound Others from earth to the gilded Stars, Conquering me, already conqueror of the World.
— Isabella Andreini to Giambattista MarinoStars I greatly admire you: but the serene Lights that blaze forth from her beautiful lashes Always burn brightly enough to conquer the Sun, [So much that] my avid regard can no longer endure.
— Isabella Andreini to Louise Marguerite de LorraineLovely young Angel in whom one sees so much Honesty, virtue, wit, and worth; Such that your inner goodness and outer beauty Make you the heir of your esteemed Mother.
— Isabella Andreini to Catherine de VivonneDuring the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, poets and scholars (who were often also tutors, ambassadors, and diplomats) traveled between Italy and France, participating in literary society that often included powerful, elite women, aiding the spread of literary and social practices. A key seventeenth-century example is the Neapolitan poet Giambattista Marino (1569–1625), a member of the Sienese Academy of the Filomati, whose modernization of Tassian and Petrarchan styles along with his baroque innovations in poetry were admired in France, as was his epic poem L’Adone (1623). Popular in Italy, he engaged in literary exchanges with the Italian poet and playwright Isabella Andreini, and like Andreini, he found favor in France (see the first epigraph). Marie de’ Medici invited Marino to Paris, where he stayed from 1615 to 1623 and was celebrated in salon society.
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- Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2023